The Airship Prize

From The Torontoist: ” At daybreak on the morning of August 10, 1930, His Majesty’s Airship R-100—the British airship that had arrived in Montreal from England on August 1—made a surprise visit over Toronto. She hadn’t been expected until 9 a.m., but just before dawn the faint droning of motors announced her presence over the harbour. Milkmen stopped their carts mid-route, diners and staff emptied from restaurants, and night-watchmen all gazed skyward to marvel at the ghostly sight of the airship against the moonlit sky. Ship whistles greeted the airship and woke its passengers. Across the city, people in pyjamas rushed outdoors to witness the history-making event.

With a fabric-covered frame of duralumin, an aluminum alloy, containing fifteen giant balloons of hydrogen to provide lift—since helium was rare outside of the United States—the R-100 measured 695 feet in length and 133 feet in diameter and was said to be the largest airship in the world. Built for the British Air Ministry by the Airship Guarantee Company, the R-100 flew a number of tests around the British Isles after its launch on December 16, 1929, before crossing the Atlantic to Canada where it was greeted with a jubilant outpouring of excitement.

With the benefit of hindsight, the airship seems a flawed technology stillborn in the waning days of the Empire. But this was an era when Canada’s nascent nationalism was still deeply entangled with imperial boosterism. And as the R-100 whirred above cheering throngs in Toronto and other cities, she was a symbol of a new age. With visions of airship routes criss-crossing the world, airship promoters hyped the lighter-than-air craft as the transportation and communication technology that would cement the economic and emotional bonds of the British Empire.” Historicist: “The Pride of the British Empire”